Inside Unmanned Systems

APR-MAY 2018

Inside Unmanned Systems provides actionable business intelligence to decision-makers and influencers operating within the global UAS community. Features include analysis of key technologies, policy/regulatory developments and new product design.

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61 April/May 2018 unmanned systems
inside
ENGINEERING. PRACTICE. POLICY.
vehicles or construction work blocked its way.
"DroNet and NanoMap solve two different and
somewhat complementary problems—the for-
mer can be used to explore unknown dynamic
indoor and outdoor environments, while the
latter can quickly navigate through static and
known ones," Loquercio said.
In experiments, DroNet could safely navi-
gate—autonomously—a number of busy city
streets it had not previously seen, including
straight paths and sharp curves, recognizing
static and dynamic obstacles and slowing to
avoid crashing into them. "At the moment, our
system is still very conservative, which means
that it simply stops if some obstacle blocks its
way," Loquercio said.
Surprisingly, DroNet could also generalize
its knowledge to f ly autonomously in indoor
environments it was never taught to navi-
gate, such as parking lots and office corridors.
"Given the fact we used a small commercial
drone, the speed limit we had was 3 meters
per second," Loquercio said.
"However, with better hardware,
we could go much faster."
One weakness of DroNet "is
that it does not fully exploit the
agility of drones, since it limits
the drone's motion to two di-
mensions," Loquercio said. "The drone learned
from cars and bicycles, which are not able to
f ly up obstacles."
In the future, Loquercio and his colleagues
would like to develop drones that can autono-
mously accomplish tasks given only a simply
stated goal, such as reaching the nearest post
office. "This requires an understanding that
drones still lack," Loquercio said.
" THE DRONE LEARNED FROM CARS
AND BICYCLES, WHICH ARE NOT ABLE
TO FLY UP OBSTACLES."
Antonio Loquercio, an artifi cial intelligence
researcher, University of Zurich
The most powerful LabSat yet, the new LabSat 3 WIDEBAND
captures and replays more GNSS signals at a much higher resolution
than before.
LabSat 3 WIDEBAND can record and replay the following signals:
• GPS: L1 / L2 / L5
• GLONASS: L1 / L2 / L3
• BeiDou: B1 / B2 / B3
• QZSS: L1 / L2 / L5
• Galileo: E1 / E1a / E5a / E5b / E6
• SBAS: WAAS, EGNOS, GAGAN,
MSAS, SDCM
• IRNSS
www.labsat.co.uk